1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical guiding system showing a position of a medical instrument in reference image data having anatomical positional information of at least one of a viscus and an organ of a human body and guiding the medical instrument.
2. Description of Related Art
There has been conventionally well-known a medical instrument as typified by an endoscope, an ultrasound endoscope, a small-diameter ultrasound probe or the like, which is introduced into gastrointestinal tract, biliopancreatic duct, blood vessels, etc. in the body, to be used for diagnosis, treatment, operation and the like. The endoscope includes a bronchoscope, a gastrointestinal endoscope, a laparoscope, and the like. Also, there is well-known a medical instrument to diagnose and treat the viscera and organs from body surface, as typified by an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus.
When performing diagnosis or operation using the medical instrument with respect to a living body, an operator performs diagnosis and surgery assuming anatomical position under current observation, while previously taking into account known anatomical positional relationships of the organs or the tissues in a living body.
In order to assist such diagnosis and surgery, there have been proposed techniques for displaying a guide image guiding a current anatomical position of the medical instrument at the time of diagnosis and surgery, through synthesis based on a CT image or an MRI image obtained in advance.
As a medical guiding apparatus, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-149481, for example, describes a technique for detecting a distal end position of an ultrasound endoscope to construct a guide image corresponding to an anatomical position of the ultrasound endoscope based on an anatomical image data and display the constructed guide image.
In the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-149481, sample point position detection means for detecting a position of a sample point of a living body is provided and the position of the sample point detected by the sample point position detection means is checked against a position of a feature point on reference image data retained in image information retention means to create a guide image. In addition, body position detection means for detecting a position or an orientation of a living body is mounted to a subject. Based on the position or orientation of the subject detected by the body position detection means, the position of the sample point detected by the sample point position detection means is corrected, and thereby the guide image is created while correcting a variation of body position of the subject.